Feedback. Love it or hate it, it’s a necessity for growing as an individual and as a leader. The typical workplace culture has feedback that is usually one-directional, top-down. Your boss is “responsible” for helping you grow professionally and this often comes in the form of direct feedback about your work performance. If you’re lucky enough to have a good leader, then you’re probably receiving a mix of positive and negative feedback. Regardless of what type of feedback you may be receiving, the chances are it is only flowing one way.

Why is it that most leaders do not encourage consist feedback from their team?

Is it because they always make the best decisions or because once you reach “leadership” status that you’re good in the feedback department? Nope and nope.

Leaders are people too, and they need feedback just like everyone else.

Leaders are people too, and they need feedback just like everyone else. The problem is an inherent trust gap between leaders and those they lead. People are afraid to give direct feedback to their leaders. A recent Edelman survey found that one in three people don’t trust their employer. One in three! They are fearful for their jobs and how they will be perceived during performance review time. A nail that sticks out will be hammered, right?

At 352 Inc. I had four direct VP reports and an indirect staff consisting of 56 people. I saw this problem first-hand every day and built Fraynk to solve it. Fraynk is an anonymous platform for employees to give feedback to leadership. It’s a safe place for anyone and everyone to express how they are really feeling about the company, its leadership and the state of things on the ground. Leaders need feedback to get better at leading (meta, I know).

Here are a couple of examples of how Fraynk helped me get better. Every Thursday Fraynk asks everyone in the organization a question about how their boss is doing. Every comment and feedback response is public. This makes it super transparent and unavoidable. Here’s a work-life question Fraynk asked a couple of weeks ago.

Clearly I need to take a look at the workload I’m expecting because someone is feeling overloaded. And if one person is feeling overloaded I’m sure others are too. Here’s the magic… Even though I have really good relationships with my team no one has ever mentioned this to me. I feel like I’m doing a good job in the work-life department, but it looks like I could improve and that is invaluable feedback.

Fraynk also allows for anonymous two-way communication.

Fraynk also allows for anonymous two-way communication. Anyone in the company can have an anonymous conversation with any leader in the company. Here’s a great example from a few months back.

Someone wasn’t happy with how things were going. Fraynk gave them a safe place for them to express some of their frustration with me and also allowed me a place to acknowledge their concern, respond, and reach out to get to more information about the issue. With Fraynk I was able to have an anonymous dialog about what’s going on where I was able to identify actionable ways I could make the work environment better.

We built Fraynk to improve workplace communication. We’re passionate about building a great company with open and honest feedback. It’s time for you to freely give feedback to your leadership! They need it, trust me…

Sign up for Fraynk and share your thoughts with me. I’d love to hear about how you were able to give feedback within your company.